


Prisms, Pendulums and Chronographs

by hearts_blood



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brother-Sister Relationships, Crossover, F/M, M/M, Polyamory, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:16:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/hearts_blood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon is not all that he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prisms, Pendulums and Chronographs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raynidreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/gifts).



> Written for rirenec for prompt "Prisms of a fragmented whole [Leoben as an Auronar]". Picks up during the B7 episode "Time Squad." For the purposes of this AU, the next episode, "The Web," takes place further on in the timeline.

Blake's people had come looking for the planet's rebel cell. Only two were left, a brother and sister, spared the Federation's gas attack because of their alien biology. They were not Human, but Auronar, telepaths from the isolationist planet of Auron, one of the few free planets left in the galaxy.

The woman's name was Cally. She was not a pretty woman, but her face haunted Avon at night, all striking angles and cool, frighteningly determined brown eyes. Her physical voice was calm, stable under pressure; her mental voice lingered in the pathways of his mind, setting off sparks Avon could not follow, no matter how hard he tried. 

Her brother was called Leoben. His face was weathered and scuffed, with eyes that flared blue like the auroras that used to dance in Earth's northern skies. They were the liveliest thing about him; he did not speak aloud, never projected his thoughts into the minds of _Liberator's_ crew, and there was a surety of purpose about his movements that made everything he did seem predetermined.

Avon did not trust them. He didn't trust anyone on the ship and those two were no exception. But he _wanted_ to trust them, and he had no clear idea of why.

"Can your brother speak?" he asked Cally one day, as the three of them worked on the teleport control panel. 

"Of course," she said, reaching to take her brother's hand fondly. Leoben smiled, but said nothing.

Avon grinned sharply. "I'm not convinced.

"He will speak when he has something to say," Cally shrugged, "although only if I am with him."

"Why?"

"To complete the circuit," said Leoben unexpectedly. His voice was gravelly from disuse and made Avon jump. 

"What—what does he mean?"

Cally cocked her head at Avon, studying him. "My brother and I are linked, in our minds. His presence awakens my mind to the truths that flow past us in the stream, and I give him the voice to speak of the things that I see. We need one another."

"Complete the circuit," Leoben said again, leaning forward, stretching out a hand to Avon. "Light moves through prisms and shatters. We must bring the light back to itself."

Cally and Leoben turned their eyes on Avon, and suddenly he was more afraid than he had ever been in his life. He left the teleport room quickly, badly shaken.

He felt as though he had just touched a live wire. 

He had always preferred computers to organic beings. Computers were trustworthy and malleable, they never talked back or tried to make him consider petty ethical and legal questions, he could take one apart and fix it if it broke, and if he could _not_ fix it, he could throw it away and get a new one. 

He couldn't do that with people. He had tried, and it always turned out badly. And he had tried acting as a Human was supposed to, instead of a machine—had friends, fallen in love—and it had brought him nothing. 

Against his better judgment, he was drawn to the Auronar. They were not Human, and as far as anyone on the ship was concerned, neither was he. Every time Vila referred to him as a machine, only half-jokingly, Avon had to bite his tongue, until the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He never agreed with anyone who called him a machine... but he never disagreed with them, either.

They were good fighters, the brother and sister, although none of the crew of _Liberator_ were convinced they were actually siblings—or if they _were_ , then siblings behaved very differently on Auron. More than once, Vila had stumbled in on Cally and Leoben engaged in a passionate embrace of one kind or another. Avon always turned away when Vila told those stories on the flight deck, even if it meant cultivating a reputation as a prude. But it was jealousy, not propriety, that made him avert his eyes from Cally's unabashed perplexity and Leoben's calm smile, lit from within. 

"We are brother and sister in God's love," he always replied. "The pendulum swings back and forth, life starts and stops and starts again. We express love. We make love. We bring the light back to itself."

Avon dreamed of his parents that night. At least, they were the people he had always assumed were his parents. He had no connection to the memories of the silvery-haired man and woman. They stood holding his hands, smiling at him, and then they were gone, as always. Leoben stood in their place, holding a piece of crystal in his hand. A prism. He held it up and it scattered pieces of Avon's reflection all over the room. "Which one of these is you?"

His face, pale and chiseled and tumbled over with dark hair, flashed before his eyes, all exactly the same—all identical. "I don't know," Avon cried out. "I don't know."

He woke in a cold sweat, terrified of—of something. It was well before his duty shift was scheduled to begin, so he decided to take a shower. Inside the tiny, steam-filled cubicle, he gave in to a carefully-constructed fantasy and lost himself in the dream of Cally's mouth on his cock and Leoben moving inside him. He came hard, slumping against the wall and struggling to breath.

It had seemed so real... Her lips on his hard flesh, Leoben's hands on his hips... As if he had called the whole scenario into being.

Weeks passed. Nothing changed. They ran, they fought, they ran again. Blake ranted on about the Federation and freedom and the rights of man. Leoben talked of the love of God made manifest in humanity. Cally's voice in Avon's mind was smooth and cool, as if she had always been there. 

She brought him to the bed she shared with her brother and all happened as Avon had imagined, and more. He moved in her and Leoben moved in him, and their voices were in his mind. He felt the strength of the connection they shared, felt again the frustrated jealousy he had nursed in silence. Without her, Leoben had no voice. Without him, Cally had no sight. 

And without them... _What am I?_ Avon wondered to himself, as they lay in a tangled, spent heap in Cally's narrow bunk. 

_Our brother,_ said Cally's soft voice in his mind. _There is time on your soul, held in a circle, held on a chain._

"...Like a stopwatch?"

_Chronograph. Start and stop and start again._ Leoben's hand was firm on Avon's chest. _You complete the circuit, Kerr._

Again, the nameless terror swept over him. He knew full well what he was _not_ , and he was comfortable with that knowledge. Avon pushed Leoben's hand away, took his clothes, and left. 

He avoided them carefully, until the day the stumbled upon The Lost.

Cally, taken over by a strange alien entity, and the ship nearly dragged into a web of interstellar fungus towards a planet that turned Leoben dead-white. He clung to his sister as though he could hold the ship back through her. "Complete the circuit, Cally," he urged, holding her face in his hands, his blue eyes alight. "The pendulum swings back. We renounce The Lost, we trust in God. God is love and we are God. Complete the circuit." His blazing eyes snapped to Avon. "Help me, brother," he said, holding out his hand. 

"Me."

"You have started and stopped. You must start again. Bring the light back to itself."

Avon had long since stopped trying to unravel Leoben's babbling, but this time it called to something within him... within his soul, if such a thing existed. He moved forward and took the Auronar's hand. He felt a strange, otherworldly power flowing through the blond man. 

All in a tumbling rush, Avon found himself standing in a lush, sweltering jungle, makeshift laboratories and equipment strewn about a clearing, small creatures that looked like cabbages with legs running around and squeaking furiously. Leoben stood beside him, holding his hand in a painfully strong grip. He was saying something, Avon didn't understand what.

Cally was there as well, looking strangely blank, held fast between two silver-haired creatures, a man and a woman, their features floating down from Avon's subconscious and coalescing in front of him.

"...Mother? Father?"

The man smiled, and his smile was like Avon's, all thin lips and watchful eyes. "Kerr. Come home, son."

Unthinking, Avon took a step forward, but Leoben held him back. "No!" he shouted angrily. "We have renounced you. Cally, come back!"

The woman shook her head slowly, side to side, with tolerant, long-suffering pity. "We are your parents, Leoben. Yours and your brothers and your sisters. Yours, Cally's... Kerr's. We are your makers. You must come home to us. We need you."

"God made us through you," Leoben said. "You were the vessels of God's plan, our guides on his path, and your tried to corrupt that path."

" _We_ are your gods," the man said sternly.

"We are all God," Avon heard himself saying, without knowing why or where inside himself the words were coming from.

"We built the Auronar," the woman insisted, in a patient, wounded voice just like that of a disappointed mother. "Wire by wire, cell by cell, circuit by telepathic circuit. We gave you life and you turned on us."

"Because you turned from the path that God laid out for you," Leoben replied, voice steady and sure. "We will not. We are the light of God shattered in the prism, and the light must come back to itself—Cally, come _back_ to us!"

"Complete the circuit," Avon whispered. 

"The pendulum swings back," the silver-haired man sneered. "Leoben the Prophet, always swinging between sanity and sainthood, always mundane or mad, never one or the other for very long."

Avon clutched Leoben's hand, feeling the power surging through them like current from a live wire.

"And which one of the Kerrs are you?" the man—their father, their maker—demanded. "Your model was the worst of the disappointments. All of you alike, more machine than man. The only thing alive about you was your sense of self-preservation. We tried to destroy you all—"

"For children to grow, parents must die," Leoben muttered, eyes never leaving The Lost. 

"We failed," said their mother. "A small handful of the Kerr model survived, but their minds were damaged. They escaped us."

"We had thought they would all die soon, left on their own," their father continued. "But you are alive and unspoilt. How did you begin again?"

"I don't know," Avon said, and tried not to wilt under his makers' displeasure. "I don't know, I—start and stop. That's what you said." He looked at Leoben; the blond man's smile spread across his unshaven face like a sunrise. "Start and stop... and start again."

"He has time on his soul." Cally took a deep breath, and smiled at her brothers. "Held on a circle, held on a chain. He completes the circuit."

Overjoyed without understanding or caring why, Avon reached out to her with his free hand. Leoben copied the motion. "We renounce The Lost," the three siblings spoke in unison, Cally stretching out to touch them even as their makers struggled to hold her back. "We trust in God. God is love and we are God. Complete the circuit."

"The light must come back to itself--"

"The pendulum swings back--"

"Life starts and stops and starts again--"

Leoben and Avon gripped Cally's fingers. "Complete the circuit."

Avon's consciousness crashed back into his body. He was on _Liberator's_ flight deck, kneeling with Cally and Leoben. The others stood around them, worried and afraid. His head roared and his vision swirled before him; dimly, he heard the ship's computer say that they were moving away from the strange planet. 

"Cally," Blake began, touching her shoulder, looking genuinely worried for once, "are you all right?"

She let out a long breath, and nodded. "I am well, Blake."

"Leoben? Avon?"

"Yes," said Leoben. 

The others traded unnerved looks; that one little word was the most straightforward thing they had ever heard Leoben say. 

Blake scrubbed a hand through his black curls. "Avon? What about you?"

The man who knew he was not a man looked at his brother and sister. _We are... God?_ Their voices came back to him at once, enveloping and warm. 

_God is love._

_The circuit is complete._ Avon rose to his feet, his hands still clasped in Cally and Leoben's fingers. "I'm fine, Blake. Naturally." 

And he smiled.


End file.
